Critical Assessment of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan
In the first nine months of 2014, about 25 lakh toilets were built and in the next three months about 24 lakh toilets were constructed – making it 49 lakh toilets built in fiscal year 2014-15. While that may seem like an impressive number, it pales in comparison to the gargantuan 11.12 crore toilets that need to be built over the next four years to achieve total saturation under the SBM. It is not clear how the jump from constructing just 50 lakh toilets per year to 2.6 crore toilets a year will be managed and done.
Further, a simple on-ground verification of numbers uploaded on the MDWS website in a few areas found that many of the toilets claimed may not actually exist on the ground. This was revealed when organizations working in those areas went to provide the communities where such toilets were built information on post-construction usage and instead found the toilets missing. This raises questions on the efficacy of the SBM’s monitoring systems. Also a lot of money has been spent on building of toilets without an indication, at least until now, of toilet usage.
Moreover, despite of the official statistics on the hundreds of thousands of toilets built in homes and schools, the scheme has been a non-starter because of lack of access to water (good/bad). If someone has to carry water pots home on her / his head for several kilometers, he / she is unlikely to be enthusiastic about pouring it down a drain just because someone has brought home the drain. The problem is that majority of the villages have no access to water facility. So proper sanitation is clearly out of question unless such an intervention is made, but the government is doing a reverse intervention of constructing toilets first and then taking care of other facilities.
However, the programme has achieved success in area of raising awareness about sanitation. Any cleanliness initiative will not achieve its objective without people’s participation. To that extent SBM surely deserves a credit. Other important initiatives include Bal Swatchata mission that was launched to inculcate cleanliness values and personal hygiene amongst children. This would go a long way in making behavioral changes towards cleanliness.
The Ministry of Railways has built bio-toilets for train coaches which will help in reducing manual scavenging.
Other proposals which are under consideration are- Urban Development Ministry planning to generate electricity and compost from municipal solid waste; then Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers would soon bring a proposal before Cabinet to provide Market Development Assistance on sale of city compost to farmers. Therefore initiatives are under way to bring about effective changes on the ground level. However ultimately time will only tell whether SBA is just an old model in a new package or an effective programme to bring about changes.
